It doesn’t look like much headway has been made, at least nothing that can go to print. It will be interesting to get the insights from the Crys meeting this week ( as an aside an amazing effort by Crys to get this meeting scheduled in this week..the other regions are envious of our world class linkage to the Board).

One thing is for sure, if I had to pick a region that has both the best team at the table, and would be odds on to come out of it with most skin in the game, I’d pick the Scarlets.

Not just because we have continuity of leadership, and othe other regions are either in a new or vague leadership model, but because we are actually the only region that has a clear and unambiguous road map for success.

WRU Board meeting today to pass the model for forthcoming seasons and the budgets for next season. Announcement expected tomorrow.

We are so very, very lucky with the management and structure at Scarlets, but the model has to be agreed by the delusional Blues and bankrupt Ospreys, while accommodating the hapless Dragons, too. The end result is a bit of a mess, but it's our mess - we're all in this together, bois.

There has to be a future for a North Wales Region in this somewhere as there has to be more up there than RGC which has stagnated after much earlier success and with that population base it really cannot be ignored but no idea how it will be achieved other than moving the Scarlets to Colwyn Bay !!! (I am joking before I get hate mail ! ) Bigger brains than mine need to sort that out....

"I'd rather have been a judge than a miner.Being a miner,as soon as you are too old and tired and sick and stupid to do the job properly,you have to go.The very opposite applies with judges!"P.Cook

There has to be a future for a North Wales Region in this somewhere as there has to be more up there than RGC which has stagnated after much earlier success and with that population base it really cannot be ignored but no idea how it will be achieved other than moving the Scarlets to Colwyn Bay !!! (I am joking before I get hate mail ! ) Bigger brains than mine need to sort that out....

Why should North Wales have a pro side? Whose paying for it? No way should money be taken from the current pro sides to accommodate this.

I still wake up late at night and think of what might have been when tim stimpson hit that jammy penalty1

There has to be a future for a North Wales Region in this somewhere as there has to be more up there than RGC which has stagnated after much earlier success and with that population base it really cannot be ignored

Why should North Wales have a pro side? Whose paying for it? No way should money be taken from the current pro sides to accommodate this.

Is it okay to agree with both comments!?

1. There should be a pro side in N Wales

2. No money should be taken from existing regions to fund a Gog region

Is it fantasy to think a pro team should be self-sustainable? (Apparently yes!)

As lovely and as fair as it would be to have a pro team in North Wales, the reality is that it would be incredibly costly (not to mention difficult) to achieve. Even with a huge amount of WRU cash pumped in in recent years, the set-up there is still only barely semi-pro standard.

The population in the north is so sparse that they would struggle to achieve a fraction of the crowd that Dragons get at Rodney Parade on a regular basis, such are the drive times and logistical challenges in the region. Whilst pro rugby at RGC might once have been a worthwhile pipe dream, we cannot now get there from here.

Within the remit of the PRB, we now have:

1 well run club operating on a relative shoestring punching well above its weight

1 basket-case club trying to delude itself about its capabilities

1 merged club that's technically insolvent and so desperate that it's proposed a merger with the basket-cases

1 wholly owned subsidiary that no-one seems to be able to improve

1 national team that (despite all of the above) is no.3 in the world rankings, unbeaten in 12 Tests and building strength and resilience for the World Cup in September

Not an easy situation to fix, but at least the WRU and Regions are focused on fixing it together and maintaining/improving the performance of those that can - the vision is shared, and (for now, at least) is still built on the 4 existing pro teams.

Some significant changes are still to come, especially at the Os, so who knows what it will look like in a few months, let alone years, but the only way I can see pro rugby happening in north Wales is if the Dragons are taken to Colwyn Bay for alternating home games - financially ruinous, but at least we'd see if there may be a Gog rugby market to serve.

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